The Media Copilot

The Media Copilot
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Hosted by journalist Pete Pachal, The Media Copilot is a weekly conversation with smart people on how AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

  1. Best of the Year: Inside the AI Shift that’s Transforming Media and Journalism

    12/28/2025

    Best of the Year: Inside the AI Shift that’s Transforming Media and Journalism

    As the year wraps up, we’re taking a pause from weekly interviews to share a curated Best of the Year in AI. This special episode of The Media Copilot is a look back at the conversations that defined the past year...the questions, tensions, and turning points shaping how media, journalism, and technology intersect right now. Over the past year, Pete has spoken with some of the sharpest minds working at the center of AI, publishing, and platform design. And while the tools keep evolving, the same core questions kept resurfacing: How should creators and publishers be compensated in an AI-driven world?Where does transparency end and exploitation begin?Who actually controls the future of information, and who should? In this Best Of episode, you’ll hear standout moments from those conversations, including:  • How publishers are navigating AI licensing, attribution, and revenue • Why the rise of AI agents and scraping tools is forcing a rethink of digital rights • The growing tension between innovation and consent • What ethical AI actually looks like in practice, not theory • Why human judgment, context, and trust still matter more than ever From conversations with leaders at ProRata, Cloudflare, Taboola, Factiva, and more, this episode captures the real debates happening behind the scenes — beyond the headlines and hype. 🎙️ Featured Voices  Bill Gross – Founder & CEO, ProRataAnnelies Jansen – Chief Business Officer, ProRataMark Howard – Chief Operating Officer, Time (formerly Time Inc.)Adam Singolda – CEO, TaboolaToshit Panigrahi – CEO & Co-Founder, TolbitAurélie Guerrieri – Chief Marketing & Alliances Officer, CloudflareStephanie Cohen – Chief Strategy Officer, CloudflareMark Riley – Founder & CEO, Mathison AITraci Mabrey – General Manager, FactivaTrip Adler – Founder & CEO, Created by Humans If you care about the future of media, the economics of creativity, or how AI is reshaping who gets paid and who gets left behind, this one’s for you. 🎧 Listen now to The Media Copilot: Best of 2025 — and stay tuned for what’s next. 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2025

    31 min

  2. 12/19/2025

    Can You Trust That Clip? Storyful’s James Law on Verification in the AI Era

    AI has turned verification into a newsroom survival skill. Please support the sponsor of this podcast: PodPitch.com is a software that thousands of people use today to book podcasts with a 4% booking rate. It’s the most updated podcast email database and it comes with a custom-trained AI that learns YOUR voice and applies what works from more than 10 million previous pitches to optimize your own reply rate. Now one comms pro has the power of a 10-person team. Join Golin, Weber, Edelman, Finn, Broadhead, 5W and more in seeing a live demo today. Click here now to book time to check out PodPitch: https://new.podpitch.com/mediacopilot In this episode of The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal talks with James Law, Editor-in-Chief of Storyful, about how newsrooms verify social and user-generated video in an era of AI, deepfakes, and viral misinformation. Law explains how verification evolved from the Arab Spring, when social media footage became central to breaking news, to today’s flood of viral clips and AI-generated video designed to look like real eyewitness content. He breaks down Storyful’s verification workflow, why metadata still matters, and how every clip is checked for date, location, and source. They also discuss the limits of AI detection tools, the rise of “harmless” synthetic videos that erode trust, and why authenticity and transparency matter more than ever for newsrooms. What We Cover - How Storyful verifies video at scale - Why AI detection tools fall short - The role of metadata and raw files - The growing trust problem in digital media - Why authenticity outperforms polish on social platforms About the Guest James Law is Editor-in-Chief at Storyful. 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslaw21/ 🔗 X: https://x.com/JournoLawJ 🔗 https://storyful.com/about/ 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2025

    43 min

  3. 12/12/2025

    Practical AI in the Newsroom with Darla Cameron of The Texas Tribune

    The surprising places AI helps journalists, and the places it really doesn’t. AI in journalism can feel abstract until you talk to the people actually shipping products inside newsrooms. In this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, host Pete Pachal talks with Darla Cameron, Chief Product Officer at The Texas Tribune, about what happens when AI meets real reporting, real audiences, and real constraints. Darla comes from a background in data journalism and visual storytelling at places like the Washington Post and now leads product at a nonprofit newsroom that has been experimenting with custom tools, data explorers, and audience-driven experiences for more than a decade. In the wide-ranging discussion, she shares how the Tribune defines product as the interface between content and audience, and how AI and automation are starting to reshape that work without replacing journalists or eroding trust. From transcription tools and meeting analysis to tightly scoped chatbots and AI-narrated stories, Darla walks through what is actually working inside the Tribune, what quietly failed, and the principles that guide every experiment. Why This Matters News organizations are being squeezed from all sides. Reporters are expected to cover more with fewer resources. Audiences are drifting into AI-powered interfaces that sit between publishers and their readers. At the same time, trust in institutions is fragile and any perceived shortcut can damage a brand that took years to build. Darla offers a grounded reality check from inside a newsroom that is embracing experimentation while drawing clear lines. The Tribune has an AI policy that explicitly says AI will not replace journalists. They do not use AI to generate news stories or images. They are very deliberate about where automation helps and where human judgment is non negotiable. For anyone working in media, product, or audience strategy, this conversation is a practical guide to using AI as an assistive layer rather than a replacement. It is about how to adapt to new tools without losing the thing that makes your journalism worth trusting in the first place. What We Cover Why “product” matters in a newsroom and how it links journalism, design, and audience engagement. Real-world examples: using AI to transcribe interviews or analyze podcasts for reporting. What The Texas Tribune’s AI policy looks like: when automation helps, and when human verification is essential. Why the Tribune refuses AI-generated images and prefers real photography for accountability and trust. Lessons from building chatbots and interactive tools — including what worked, what didn’t, and what the team learned. How audience feedback guides when and how to use AI, especially in a nonprofit news model. About the Guest Official bio: Texas Tribune – Darla Cameron The Texas Tribune  Professional profile: LinkedIn – Darla Cameron 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2025

    41 min

  4. 12/05/2025

    Building the Next Era of the Open Web with Adam Singolda

    The Taboola CEO explains how USA Today’s DeeperDive changes news discovery, and why publishers might need “chat” after all. AI is rewriting the rules of digital media and few people have had a closer view of the shift than Adam Singolda. In this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal has a candid conversation with the Taboola founder about where the open web is headed and why the next era of audience discovery may look nothing like the search driven world we grew up in. Adam has been building Taboola since 2007 and continues to shape one of the largest advertising and recommendation platforms on the open web. He shares what publishers often miss about AI, how performance advertising is evolving, and why trusted media brands may hold more power than ever as chat based discovery becomes mainstream. Why This Matters Media is in a moment of rapid transition. Search traffic is shifting, conversational queries are becoming a default behavior, and publishers are being pushed to rethink how they attract and retain audiences. Adam offers rare insight from inside a global platform that sits at the center of these changes. He explains how AI is reshaping revenue models, what publishers can do right now to stay competitive, and why this new interaction layer may redefine how journalism is discovered and consumed. What We Cover • Adam’s journey from founding Taboola in 2007 to running a global advertising and recommendation platform• How Taboola positions itself as the performance engine of the open web• What the company has learned about audience behavior across thousands of publishers• How AI is changing advertising performance, engagement, and publisher economics• The impact of declining search traffic and the rise of chat based discovery• The creation of Taboola’s Deeper Dive experience and how users actually interact with AI on news sites• Why publishers need to experiment with AI quickly or risk losing ground• How trust and brand identity give premium publishers an advantage in the AI era• What adoption looks like when you introduce AI directly into media workflows• The future of LLM monetization and why Adam sees a major opportunity for journalism More… Learn about Taboola’s mission, how it started — https://www.taboola.com.     Taboola.com+1    LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamsingolda 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2025

    43 min

  5. 11/21/2025

    Inside Time’s AI Push: Mark Howard on Building an Agent, Not Just Another Widget

    In this episode of The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal talks with Mark Howard, Chief Operating Officer at Time, about how a century-old newsroom is adapting to a world where readers increasingly turn to AI systems for information. Howard explains how Time approached AI not as a passing trend but as a shift in how journalism will be discovered and consumed. He walks through the decisions behind partnering with AI companies, the work required to safeguard Time’s archive, and how the Time AI Agent grew out of experiments with summaries, translations, and audio briefings. The conversation offers a clear look at the practical choices a legacy media brand faces when it tries to stay trusted in new formats without compromising the reporting that built its reputation. What we cover in this episode • How Time decided to negotiate with AI companies instead of taking an adversarial stance • The behind-the-scenes systems created to protect IP and track bot activity • The evolution from Person of the Year experiments to daily AI audio briefings to the Time AI Agent • Why the agent is grounded only in Time’s archive and what that means for accuracy and trust • How Time is approaching AI marketplaces, enterprise licensing, and the agent to agent web • What this shift means for the newsroom, editorial workflows, and audience relationships Learn more Mark Howard on Time https://time.com/author/mark-howard The Story Behind the TIME AI Agent https://time.com/7332572/the-story-behind-the-time-ai-agent Mark on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/markdhoward Mark on X https://x.com/markdhoward  This post was drafted with AI and then carefully edited by Media Copilot editors. 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2025

    51 min

  6. 11/14/2025

    Reinventing Ads for the Age of AI

    Michael Rubenstein on how “brand agents” are reshaping advertising, publishing, and the Internet itself We’ve spent decades trying to make digital advertising smarter. Cookies, pixels, and data exchanges promised personalization but delivered clutter, tracking fatigue, and declining returns. Then came AI, bringing the chance not just to improve ads, but to completely reimagine how brands and audiences interact. In this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal sits down with Michael Rubenstein, Co CEO of Firsthand and one of the original architects of modern ad tech. After helping launch DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange (later acquired by Google), Rubenstein is now building something that feels like the opposite of programmatic advertising, a world where brand “agents” don’t just target you, they talk to you. Instead of static banners or pre-rolls, these AI-driven brand agents act like adaptive digital representatives that engage, inform, and even create content on the fly. They’re built to live anywhere, inside a publisher’s story, across a retailer’s site, or within a chat experience, meeting consumers wherever they are and responding in real time to what they actually want. This conversation explores how brand agents are transforming advertising into an intelligent, intent driven dialogue, and what that means for publishers, marketers, and the future of media. What We Cover: • How AI driven brand agents are changing advertising and media engagement • Why this new model removes invasive tracking and builds real consumer trust • How publishers can use adaptive experiences to grow audience value • Why AI represents not automation but communication • The cultural and ethical stakes of rebuilding advertising around AI conversations In Closing AI is taking down the old walls of the Internet. The question isn’t whether advertising and publishing will change, it’s whether they can adapt fast enough to stay relevant. The future, as Rubenstein says, isn’t programmatic, it’s personal. Connect with Michael Rubenstein: 🔗 Firsthand.ai 💼 LinkedIn – Michael Rubenstein X (formerly Twitter): https://x.com/mrubenstein99 Listen to the full episode of The Media Copilot with host Pete Pachal and guest Michael Rubenstein on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. 👉 Visit mediacopilot.ai for more on our classes, insights, and upcoming episodes. (AI-assisted) 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0

    42 min

  7. 11/07/2025

    How Newsrooms Are Really Using AI

    Inside how AI is actually being used inside media companies today— and what success looks like when it’s done right. In this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, Pete Pachal speaks with John Levitt, COO of Elvex, about how AI is actually being adopted inside newsrooms and media organizations today. Not the hype. Not the pitch deck version. The real workflows happening behind the scenes. Elvex works with major media companies to build internal AI environments that support reporting, fact-checking, content repurposing, sales operations, research, and product strategy. John has a rare view into the daily shift in how teams work, collaborate, and adapt. This conversation explores: • How editorial, business, and product teams are already using AI • Why culture and leadership framing determine whether AI succeeds • Where AI reduces repetitive work without replacing journalists • What "context engineering" means and why it matters more than prompts • How media companies can experiment with AI safely and responsibly • The next shift toward agent-to-agent workflows and personalized news experiences If you work in media, journalism, audience growth, newsroom operations, AI product development, or leadership strategy, this episode breaks down what is actually changing and what is coming next. GUEST: John Levitt https://www.elvex.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnmlevitt/  📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele MussoEdited by the Musso Media Team  Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2025

    39 min

  8. 10/24/2025

    The Writing Renaissance: Tony Stubblebine on Medium’s Human Future in the Age of AI

    What if AI could make us better writers instead of replacing us? The next chapter of the internet may do exactly that by using technology to strengthen creativity rather than erase it. Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, joins The Media Copilot with Pete Pachal to talk about the new reality of writing in an AI world. As algorithms reshape how stories are created and shared, Stubblebine believes we are entering a writing renaissance where technology helps writers stay focused, authentic, and connected to their readers. They explore: The collapse of free-content economics and the rise of the post-Google internet Why Medium is betting on smaller, more human writing communities How AI can enhance creativity rather than erase it The tools that will keep writers in flow and make the act of writing joyful again If you care about creativity, technology, and the future of storytelling, this is a conversation you should not miss. 📩 Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube?  Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the channel.  For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit MediaCopilot.ai. 🎧 Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso 🎬 Edited by the Musso Media Team © 2025 Musso Media. All rights reserved. 🎵 Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0 © AnyWho Media 2025

    47 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
5 Ratings

About

Hosted by journalist Pete Pachal, The Media Copilot is a weekly conversation with smart people on how AI is changing media, journalism, and the news.

Information

  • Creator
    The Media Copilot
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    78
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Media Copilot
  • Show Website
    The Media Copilot

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